


Book... 


Copyright hi 0 _ 


CQFmiGiiT DEPoam 
















RAISING THE 
OLD BOY 

Phases of the Life of a New England 
Country Lad in the Last 
Mid-Century 

By HENRY E. WING 











































V 





By the Same Author 
WHEN LINCOLN KISSED ME 



RAISING THE 
OLD BOY " L. 


Phases of the Life of a New England 
Country Lad in the Last Mid-Century 



HENRY E. WING 

'V 







THE ABINGDON PRESS 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 









Copyright, 1923, by 

HENRY E. WING 


All rights reserved, including that of translation into 
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 



« 

'■ ©Cl A764154 


Printed in the United States of America 

NOV 14 ’23 


"Vvo ! 


DEDICATION 

As I recall the events of which this is 
a disconnected narrative, there intrudes 
upon the scenes the form of the quick¬ 
witted, sober-minded, tender-hearted boy 
who shared in many of these experiences, 
and who afterward, as the Rev. Charles 
Sherman Wing, of the New York East 
Conference, did the work of a true evan¬ 
gelist and made full proof of his ministry; 
and I dedicate this volume to his memory. 

H. E. Wing. 



CONTENTS 


PAGB 

The Wherefore. 9 

Introducing the Boy. 11 

I. A Child of Nature. 13 

II. Good Old Job.22 

III. Christmas by Candlelight. .. 26 

IV. Like an Honest Boy.31 

V. “Spirit Rappings”.33 

VI. A Close Call.36 

VII. A Declaration of Independ¬ 
ence.45 

VIII. My Nemesis.50 

IX. The Confessional..56 

X. Good — But Not “Goody- 

Good”.60 

XI. My “Upsetting” Fault.63 

XII. The Last Lesson.71 

XIII. “Chestnuts”.76 

XIV. “The Eternal Step of Prog¬ 

ress” .87 





















THE WHEREFORE 

T LISTENED to a lecture a few years 
* ago in which it was proved (?) that, 
for the lack of modern scientific treatment, 
very few children of the former generations 
lived to grow up. It was quite a shock to 
be informed—by strong inference at least 
—that most of my ancestors had died in 
their infancy and I can hardly realize it 
yet. 

I refer to this as an illustration of a quite 
prevalent idea that there were no real 
boys and girls in the other days; and I 
rehearse these rather ordinary incidents of 
my childhood as a true picture of the 
hearty and wholesome life of a New Eng¬ 
land country boy in the last mid-century. 

H. E. Wing. 

West Redding, Connecticut. 


9 










✓ 












INTRODUCING THE BOY 

Henry Makes His Bow 


TTENRY E. WING, the subject of 
these sketches, was the son of 
Ebenezer and Elizabeth Reed Wing; and 
he had his upbringing in the town of 
Goshen in northwestern Connecticut. He 
is a scion of standard New England stock. 
By his father he is a descendant, through 
a long line of seafarers, of one John Wing, 
whose widow, with three sons, sailed into 
Massachusetts Bay, June 5, 1632, on the 
good ship William Francis, only eighty- 
eight days from London. His mother was 
a direct descendant of John Reed, of Corn¬ 
wall, England, who was a subaltern in 
Cromwell’s army when it was dispersed 
by the restoration of King Charles II. 
The nimble-footed “rebel” made a quick 
get-away, and landed in Providence, in 
1660. 

The youngster with whom we are in¬ 
terested, after obtaining an academic edu¬ 
cation, began preparation for the legal 
profession; but before he had been 


12 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


admitted to the Bar, the Civil War broke 
out, and he enlisted, in the early autumn 
of 1862, in the Twenty-Seventh Connecti¬ 
cut Volunteers. He was one of the Color 
Guard of that splendid regiment, and was 
twice wounded, attempting to carry its 
flag up against the Confederate batteries, 
on Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg, the 
following December. On his return from 
the army he drifted into journalism, and, 
with little interruption, followed that pro¬ 
fession for the next ten years. It was in 
this connection, as a reporter for the New 
York Tribune, in Washington, and after¬ 
ward as army correspondent, attached to 
Grant’s headquarters, that he became 
rather intimately acquainted with Mr. 
Lincoln, by which he has been able to 
make several interesting contributions to 
the fund of personal incidents relating to 
that remarkable man. 

In 1873 he dropped secular pursuits, 
and entered the ministry of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church. After following that 
calling for more than forty years he is 
now in retirement, enjoying a life of 
leisure. 


I 

A CHILD OF NATURE 

T DID not care for books. In a relative 
sense, I never have. Nature was very 
alluring upon those lofty tablelands where 
my childhood was spent. She kept a boy 
busy, looking and listening for her half- 
veiled and elusive, but surprising secrets. 
Here were the lessons that were really 
worth while: of an all-embracing sky, with 
gray clouds flitting across its face; of 
mountains with shadows upon their 
frowning foreheads; of deep, silent lakes 
and whispering rivulets; of dark, mys¬ 
terious forests and bright, sunlit fields; of 
animate nature, with its bellow, and song, 
and chirp, and twitter. To be compelled 
to turn from these enchantments to a 
stupid book was indeed “a weariness of 
the flesh.” 

Of course, I learned to read, by my 
older sister shoving the point of my stub¬ 
born, knotty finger along the line in 
the big family Bible. And afterward, at 

the village school, I traced maps and 

13 


14 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


“ciphered.” The one branch of learning in 
which I was proficient was not then rec¬ 
ognized. I was an adept in “simplified 
spelling”; and once I even got next to the 
head in old-fashioned spelling (when no 
one was in the class but a little girl and 
me). 



Geography was a big conundrum, and 
is yet. I could see the sense of a river or a 

















A CHILD OF NATURE 


15 


mountain range for a boundary, and I did 
not question a straight line, like the north¬ 
ern border of Connecticut. But what 
about that nick, where Massachusetts had 
taken a savage little bite out of us? That 
looked wicked and I resented it. And 
what about those zigzag lines in the south¬ 
west corner, between us and New York 
State? Did they represent another tug- 
of-war? I got quite carried away in my 
indignation against Florida for snatching 
that strip of seacoast off the southern edge 
of Alabama. Florida did not need any 
more seacoast. She had “shoals” (liter¬ 
ally) of coast to give away. She is almost 
all frills and openwork, like a lace hand¬ 
kerchief. But evidently, just because her 
sister Alabama wanted it, she took it. 

I can see now that, while I was not 
much of a scholar, I was something of a 
philosopher. Here was a study deeper 
than surface geography—a study of human 
nature: for I have no doubt that these 
abnormal boundary lines represent some 
selfish interest or mean, stubborn purpose. 
I have seen this despicable trait illustrated 
more than once, and often in the most 


16 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


trifling affairs. And, as if to remind me 
that I belong to the human herd, I recall 
now the occasion when, in my childhood, 
I had won every marble in the village but 
one. Then, as never before, I worked and 
bullied (and cheated) till I got that one. 
I had no use for it. My getting it actually 
broke up the game, for how could I play 
unless some other boy had a marble to 
pit against mine? It was only because he 
wanted to keep it that determined me to 
get it away from him. Such is the game 
of life. 

I am certain that the smartest boy at 
figures in the whole wide world was in 
our school—the one whose little sister 
boasted that “Our Joe can add up a col¬ 
umn of three figures four times and get 
five different answers.” But I was only 
an ordinary boy, and, with me, arithmetic 
was no better than geography. Indeed, if 
possible, it was worse. Just one expres¬ 
sion in the book commended itself to me 
—“Vulgar Fractions.” That was true. 
All fractions, and all figures, were low and 
degrading. Nearly all were about dollars, 
and pecks, and pounds, and such vulgar 


A CHILD OF NATURE 


17 


and degrading things. And, a little later, 
so many millions of miles to the glorious 
sun, who gave me that sweet kiss each 
morning, through the east window, and so 
many thousands of miles around the waist 
of my dear mother earth. And, still a little 
later along, I was to be told how many 
(actual figures) wriggles of ether make a 
golden sunset and how many wabbles a 
song. And finally (shall I set it down?) a 
noted “evangelist” was to come into my 
neighborhood and “convert” so many per¬ 
sons, at an average cost of a dollar and 
ninety-seven cents ($1.97). And this is 
what arithmetic does, when we apply it 
to the realities—to hope, joy, trust, love, 
and life eternal. 

To come back to my childhood expe¬ 
riences: As long as the teacher let me do 
sums like this, 2 + 3 = 5 , I rather enjoyed 
it, because I did not understand it and it 
excited my imagination; but when she 
insisted that 2 cats added to 3 cats made 
5 cats I was disgusted. That was silly 
and vulgar. 

Now, I do not think there was anything 
abnormal in this mystical temperament of 


18 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


mine. Boys are mostly stomach and im¬ 
agination. Both need healthful nourish¬ 
ment, but both are subject to overindul¬ 
gence. And right here was providentially 
provided the intellectual diversion that I 
needed, by the introduction of a new and 
dominating motive for serious study. 

It was a few months before I was seven 
that Miss Holbrook came to teach the 
winter term of our village school. We did 
not like her: Firstly, on general princi¬ 
ples, because she was the teacher; but 
secondly, because with our reputation of 
being a “tough” school (of which even we 
little ones w T ere proud) it was humiliating 
to have a “schoolmarm” put over us. My 
proficiency as an “artist” had already 
been recognized; and it did not require 
any urging, on the part of the others, to 
get me through a raised window, after 
school, to draw a caricature of her on the 
blackboard. The cartoon w T as one of my 
very worst—tall and angular, with big 
hands and feet, and with round, staring 
spectacles on the face. In one hand she 
held a spelling book and in the other a 


A CHILD OF NATURE 


19 



tough switch. And, to make the identity 
certain, as I did not know how to spell 
“Holbrook,” I printed under it, in capital 
letters, the word “Teciier.” 


T£CW£R 

Instantly a voice behind me cried, 
“Techer—I will teach you to spell 
‘teacher.’ ” (She had been sitting at her 
desk all the time.) Standing me on a 
stool, and accenting every separate letter 
with a tap of her ruler, she made me re- 





20 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


peat, over and over again, “T-e-a-c-h-e-r.” 
Then she quietly led me to the door and 
pitched me out into a soft snow bank. 

The next afternoon, as the school was 
dismissed, Henry Wing was told to tarry. 
I was certain of the meaning of that, and 
I braced myself for it. I had been whipped 
at school until it was a sort of recreation. 
It hurt, of course; but it roused the lust of 
battle and stirred me with a wild, exultant, 
and savage joy. But I was doomed to 
disappointment. Miss Holbrook did not 
whip me. She sat down on the low bench 
by my side, and she talked—not once 
looking at me—so sorrowfully, so despond¬ 
ently. My mother and she had been very 
dear friends (my mother had been a 
teacher); and she had been so happy in 
the thought that Elizabeth Reed’s little 
boy was to be in her school; and my 
naughtiness was inflicting upon her a per¬ 
sonal blow of pain and disappointment. 

I can vividly recall the scene; but I 
ought not to attempt to rehearse it. It 
was perfectly unaffected. She was pain¬ 
fully sincere. As she talked in her low 
tones and wiped the tears from her face 


A CHILD OF NATURE 


21 


I awakened to the fact, as a new revela¬ 
tion, that a teacher had a personal interest 
in my progress. But the startling thought 
that I had brought shame to my mother 
by my bad conduct was what roused all 
my latent, dormant powers. I was ter¬ 
ribly crushed and bruised in my spirit, 
and yet I was wonderfully uplifted. I 
was confident that I could retrieve the 
failures of the past. I was resolved that 
I would. 

It was really a very proud and happy 
boy who walked home from school that 
winter afternoon—happy in the posses¬ 
sion of a new, firm friend, who trusted 
him; proud in his purpose, for his dear 
mother’s sake, to redeem his good name. 


II 

GOOD OLD JOB 

I F there was a single distinguishing fea¬ 
ture of our home life, it was order. 
There was abundance of animation and 
amusement, and sometimes this was of a 
rather boisterous sort, for one of mother’s 
chief maxims was that no child of hers 
should have to go away from home to 
have fun. But most of our diversions 
were in the line of some useful employ¬ 
ment. The girls, of course, made their 
own dolls and other playthings, and a 
good deal of their own wardrobe. We 
boys had a work-bench in the attic well 
equipped with tools for woodcraft. Father 
saw to it that we kept our tools in perfect 
order and our bench and work-room clear 
of litter. Here we made our own carts, 
sleds, water-wheels, and windmills. 

There was a good deal of out-of-door 
life; but the evenings were usually spent 
in a group in the dining room. Here I 

would “whittle” by the hour, while my 

22 


GOOD OLD JOB 


23 


brother Charlie would listen with faculties 
all alert to the discussions in the family of 
grave subjects or to really great debates 
between father and some neighbor. Here, 
I think, was where my brother acquired 
the habit of logical discrimination for 
which he afterward became distinguished. 

The religious life of the home was very 
tranquil and wholesome. I have no recol¬ 
lection of those dreadful Puritan Sundays 
so much harped upon, although ours was 
typical of the last mid-century in New 
England. Attendance upon preaching 
services and Sunday school, reading, quiet 
strolls about the premises, and talks on 
pleasant and profitable topics filled the 
day. 

The family circle consisted of the par¬ 
ents, mother’s cousin, John Foote (who 
was father’s foreman), my two older sis¬ 
ters, my brother, and myself. To this 
group in the household were added a serv¬ 
ant girl, one or two apprentices, and fre¬ 
quently a half dozen hired men. We all 
ate at a common table, and all of these 
usually attended family worship. We 
children certainly did. Breakfast was 


24 , 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


served promptly at six o’clock summer 
and winter, and family prayers were be¬ 
fore breakfast. If we children were not 
in our places, on the low benches by the 
fireplace, when father (or cousin John, in 
his absence) opened the big Bible, we had 

no breakfast that dav. 

€/ 

Another inexorable rule was that each 
one of us should recite a verse of Scrip¬ 
ture at the breakfast table, after grace had 
been pronounced. Of course, the short 
and easv verses were most in demand, 

t/ 

until father ruled out “Jesus wept” and 
the other favorite ones. And this gave 
occasion for an incident that portrays 
very strikingly my brother’s genius. Being 
the youngest, he was the last to respond; 
and he surprised us one morning with this 
quotation: “Job three, two: And Job 
spake and said.” 

“What is that?” said father; and Charlie 
repeated it. 

“Well, what did Job say?” 

“That is all of it.” 

“That will not do, Charles. You leave 
the table.” 

Then my mother remarked, in her quiet 


GOOD OLD JOB 


25 


way, “But that is a whole verse, father, 
and that is the rule.” 

So he stayed; but the next morning we 
got a bigger shock: “Job six, one: But Job 
answered and said.” 

“You had that yesterday.” 

“No, sir” (meekly), “Yesterday it was 
‘Job spake and said/ ” 

The third morning this was it: “Job 
nine, one: Then Job answered and said.” 

Father thought he had caught him, but 
the youngster explained that yesterday it 
was “But” and this morning it was 
“Then”' And so for about two weeks 
Job and his three friends “answered and 
said” breakfast for that sober-faced, inno¬ 
cent-looking chap. 

At last, after he had exhausted all the 
resource of the patient old patriarch, he 
announced: “Job forty-two, seventeen: So 
Job died, being old and full of days.” It 
was then that cousin John broke loose in 
a roar of laughter; and even father’s face 
lit up with a smile; but the demure little 
boy who had played this game on his 
poor, helpless father for two long weeks, 
did he smile? Guess again. 


Ill 

CHRISTMAS BY CANDLELIGHT 


O NE of my grandmothers lived four 
miles from us. Christmas was com¬ 
ing and I was to spend the day with her. 
But three or four days before Christmas it 
began to snow. It snowed all that day 
and night, and the next day and night, 
and so on till the night before Christmas. 
Then it cleared off cold and a thick, hard 
crust formed on the clean, white counter¬ 
pane. 

So the sun rose bright on Christmas 
morning, and after a warm, hearty break¬ 
fast I started afoot for grandmother’s. I 
was dressed in my Sunday-go-to-meeting 
clothes, with long, loose pantaloons, a 
heavy woolen jacket, a pair of knit wor¬ 
sted mittens, and a thick cloth cap with 
broad ear tabs. My pantaloons were 
folded at the ankles and tied tight about 
my boot tops. Then mother wound a 
striped tippet six or eight times about my 

neck. That is the way a boy would be 

26 


CHRISTMAS BY CANDLELIGHT 27 


rigged to bid defiance to Jack Frost fifty 
or seventy-five years ago. 

In my pockets were some nice gifts for 
grandmother: a funny, embroidered night 
cap from mother, a fine linen handker¬ 
chief, hemstitched by hand, from my sis¬ 
ter, and several other such tokens. But I 
was certain that my own was the hand¬ 
somest and most valuable. It was a 
splendid shawl pin, with a head the size 
of a piece of chalk and about the same 
shape. I had made this myself by rolling 
the blunt end of a darning needle in a 
spoonful of melted red wax. 

I was a pretty self-satisfied boy as I 
started on my journey. The whole land¬ 
scape was clothed in white. No fences 
were in sight, except the tallest stakes, 
no hedges, no shrubs. The big trees had 
their heads wrapped up in great white 
mufflers and the scattered barns and 
houses had huge banks of snow hanging 
over their eaves like shaggy, gray eye¬ 
brows. The scene was enlivened by 
groups of men and oxen breaking the 
roads, and once in a while a scared dog 
skating around on the slippery crust, and 


28 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


a single forlorn family of crows shivering 
in the top of an old hemlock down by the 
pond. 

Well, I kept on my way, sometimes run¬ 
ning to keep my feet warm and sometimes 
creeping on my hands and knees up the 
smooth hillsides. At last I came, rather 
warm, a little tired, and pretty hungry, 
to the spot where I had expected to find 
my grandmother’s house. And now, what 
was my surprise to find no house there, 
but instead, where the house had stood, a 
great, big snowbank. But presently I de¬ 
tected a little, wavering wreath of bluish- 
gray smoke curling up out of the top of 
the mound. I scrambled up the snow¬ 
bank, and there I discovered the chimney, 
sticking up out of the white blanket, and 
a strip of the ridge of the roof, and a 
corner of the gable down to the top of 
the garret window. 

It did not take me long to work the 
window loose and crawl in. Then I crept 
softly down the dark, crooked stairs. I 
was rather nervous. That whiff of smoke 
had given me some encouragement, yet I 
might find the dear woman starved or 


CHRISTMAS BY CANDLELIGHT 29 


smothered in that dark room. I lifted 
the iron latch without a click and pushed 
open the door. There was my grand¬ 
mother, sitting with her back toward me. 
She had a lighted candle on the table by 
her side; and her face was bent over her 
big Bible as she read the story of the 
coming of the child Jesus. 

Near the door where I stood was an old- 
fashioned open fireplace, and at one side 
of it by the brick oven hung a long, slen¬ 
der, white stocking—my grandmother’s 
stocking, just as it had hung on Christmas 
mornings for over seventy years, and now, 
for the first time on a Christmas morning, 
empty. It was not empty long. I hastily 
dropped into it the gifts from my pockets, 
in my childish vanity putting my own at 
the bottom so that she would get the best 
last. Then I turned around and said, not 
very loud, “Ahem!” The surprised crea¬ 
ture looked up, first at the door, then at 
the windows, blocked with snow. Just as 
she turned about I shouted, “Merry Christ¬ 
mas, grandmother!” The dear old lady 
lifted both hands and exclaimed, “Well! 
well! If here is not Henry, and he has 


30 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


come, like a real Santa Claus, right down 
the chimney!” 

If ever a boy got a warm welcome I did. 
After she had fed me she drew the gifts 
out of the stocking. When she came at 
last to that magnificent shawl pin she was 
so delighted that she had to take it over 
to the candle, perhaps to see if the head 
was real wax; and as she bent her head 
down to examine and admire it I thought 
I heard a sly little giggle, but she turned 
back in a minute and kissed me. 

And then, turning her bright face to 
the open fire, she laid her slender hand 
upon my shoulder and said, in a low, 
tender tone, “Well, indeed, a child can 
bring a good deal of the Christ into a 
Christmas.” 


IV 

LIKE AN HONEST BOY 

T HAVE no reason to suspect that I 
might have failed to become a cred¬ 
itable member of the famous “Ananias 
Club” had my first excursion into the 
field of fiction been more successful. This, 
briefly, is the sad story: 

New Orleans molasses was shipped to 
our storekeeper in small hogsheads. After 
drawing out the liquid he would break in 
the head to get the sugar that had settled 
at the bottom. Then the empty hogs¬ 
head would be rolled around behind the 
store. Here was offered a strong tempta¬ 
tion—almost an invitation—to us boys to 
reach in and get the sweetening. And 
finally, after I had soiled my clothes badly, 
mother told me that the next such offense 
would bring me punishment. 

When, a few days afterward, a fresh 
hogshead was rolled out, with lots of 

moist, brown sugar on the bottom, the 

31 


32 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


temptation was too strong for a six-year- 
old boy to withstand, and I devised a fine 
scheme to have a feast without the slight¬ 
est chance of detection. I just stripped 
off my clothing, and crawled in for the 
best time of my life. Then, picking up 
my clothes, I sneaked up to the swimming 
hole, took a thorough scrubbing, and went 
up to the house like an honest boy. 

I said “like an honest boy”; but, alas, 
not quite enough “like” one. 

“Henry,” gasped mother as I came into 
the living room, “you have been into 
another one of those hogsheads!” 

I simply shook my head. 

“Well then, how did that molasses get 
in your hair?” 

And the story of this pitiful experience 
may explain my lack of proficiency in the 
gentle art of lying. 


V 

“SPIRIT RAPPINGS” 


N a business trip to Poughkeepsie 



father took mother and me along 
for a one-night’s visit to “Nine Partners,” 
in Dutchess County. There was an excel¬ 
lent young ladies’ seminary there, at which 
mother had graduated a few years pre¬ 
viously. I was pleased with the simple 
but courtly attention that the headmaster, 
Mr. Willets, gave to my mother, whom he 
called “Elizabeth”; and, as he was a 
Quaker, I was very proud of the ease and 
grace with which she took up their ver¬ 
nacular. 

At the evening meal the subject was 
broached - of “spirit rappings,” recently 
brought to public notice. Mother doubted 
if they were supernatural, and I quite 
agreed with her, although I had never be¬ 
fore heard of them. Mr. Willets said that 
some experiments of his own had con¬ 
vinced him that they were a manifestation 
of “animal magnetism.” Three or four 


33 


34 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


young persons about the establishment 
possessed the “power,” one very excellent 
“medium” being a strong, healthy Irish 
girl employed about the laundry. 

After the dining table had been cleared 
away the group gathered around it with 
the palms of our hands laid flat on the 
surface. Presently I felt a tingling sensa¬ 
tion through my fingers and up my arms. 
I identified it years afterward in the 
school laboratory as a distinct electric 
shock. Soon the table began to tremble, 
and at last, with our several hands lying 
flat upon it, to move slowly about. In its 
clumsy perambulations it bounced against 
mother, and Mr. Willets called out, “Thee 
will have to move, Elizabeth.” But “Eliza¬ 
beth” sat tight, and, after two or three 
jolts against her, the table moved away. 

It seemed that the affair was very ex¬ 
hausting to the chief actors, and Mr. Wil¬ 
lets soon brought it to a close. Then, 
after the company had dispersed, we found 
that mother had made a discovery. Mr. 
Willets had said that there was no ex¬ 
planation of the eccentric movements of 
the table; but when it was jostling her. 


“SPIRIT RAPPINGS” 


35 


mother, sitting directly opposite the laun¬ 
dry maid, had caught a gleam of willful¬ 
ness in the girl’s eyes. A conversation 
with her the following morning confirmed 
this opinion. The young woman was 
hardly conscious of a well-defined purpose, 
but was carrying out a natural Irish im¬ 
pulse. 

This conclusion was fully confirmed 
afterward by my brother Charles and 
myself. Understanding that the “ac¬ 
complishment” might be acquired by 
practice, we sat for hours night after night 
with our hands flat upon the little stand 
by our bedside. At the end of weeks of 
intermittent effort, we at last attained our 
hearts’ desire. The table began to trem¬ 
ble, and, finally, to wiggle about. After 
that we had a lot of fun, and we were 
“some boys” in the neighborhood. If he 
and I were at cross purposes—as, to be 
perfectly candid, we frequently were— 
the poor little table was almost an object 
of pity, as it would stand, trembling on 
its slender legs. But, by agreeing upon 
some particular performance, we could 
make it cut several lively capers. 



VI 

A CLOSE CALL 

“Ho! For the Happy Hunting 
Grounds” 

T HIS little lake lies in the breast of 
one of the highest mountains in 
Connecticut, lifted high, as by giant 
hands, level with her rugged face. On 
the north side a ledge of rocks descends 
straight down to fathomless depths; on 
the other sides a narrow beach and a 
strip of shallow water make approach to 
the crater’s edge. On the west, close to 
the shore, was an artificial circular mound 
or tumulus of blackened bowlders. 

The pool was known to be bottomless. 
We boys had proved it by tying together 
all our fish lines and letting them down 
through a hole in the ice. To the last one 
they went down. And then we added 
two or three kite lines, and to the end of 
the last one they went down. The water, 
too cold to bathe in in the hottest weather 
and always unaffected by drought or 
storm, exactly filled this deep bowl to the 

brim, a tiny trickle carrying off the over- 

36 


A CLOSE CALL 


37 


flow through a nick or dent in the south¬ 
west corner. In its depths millions (esti¬ 
mated) of magnificent fish dozed and fat¬ 
tened; sunfish as big as a hat, yellow 
perch and speckled trout that weighed 
from three to five pounds (still estimated), 
and pickerel twice as large. Only once or 
twice in a boy’s lifetime would one of 
these wonderful creatures come near the 
surface, and never was one really cap¬ 
tured; but small ones, weighing a pound 
or so (not estimated), were not uncommon. 

Where this great volume of cool, clear, 
sweet water came from was a standing 
conundrum, upon which vast treasures of 
thought and speculation were expended 
about the stove in the village store. An 
awful wise professor from Yale College 
came up and examined it with gold- 
rimmed spectacles that were presumed to 
have cost more than three dollars, but he 
could not tell. 

And all this time a silent, solitary man 
in the neighborhood knew all about it. 
He was an intimate and confidential 
friend of mine—a wise and learned Pe- 
quot Indian—who, having never wasted 


38 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


a single minute of his time with books, 
knew secrets the books could never teach. 
And one evening at twilight, sitting in the 
doorway of his lonely cabin, perhaps under 
the influence of the white man’s spirituous 
stimulant, he confided the secret of the 
mysterious lake, in strictest confidence, to 
me. 

This was a sacred pool of the aborigines, 
who in the good old times were wont to 
gather on its shores for their solemn coun¬ 
cils and religious rites. The circle of 
bowlders was an altar, upon which they 
offered (sometimes human) sacrifices. And 
the lake was fed directly by a conduit (I 
do not remember that he used that word) 
through the mountains from the eternal 
springs and fountains of the Happy Hunt¬ 
ing Grounds. Nor was this all: what was 
of more interest, and of vastly more prac¬ 
tical importance, through this original 
(“ab-original”) subway, entrance was had 
into the Abode of the Blest. To facilitate 
this happy enterprise on the part of the 
emigrant a noble chief emerged with a 
canoe every morning at sunrise from the 
very center of the lake. This could be 


A CLOSE CALL 


39 


proved any morning by a visit to the spot; 
but the visitor would not get away. If he 
were unworthy he would be seized and 
cast into its fathomless deeps; but if the 
chief recognized in him a worthy asso¬ 
ciate of the immortals he would be trans¬ 
ported, without harm or fright, through 
an arched waterway to the portals of 
Paradise. 

The tale really needed no confirmation, 
he was such an intelligent and honest 
Indian, and he spoke with so much con¬ 
fidence and sincerity. Furthermore, there 
was no possible motive for his deceiving a 
little child, of whom he was almost as 
fond as of his favorite hound. And this 
furnished a perfectly satisfactory explana¬ 
tion of a fact that had been a marvel in 
the neighborhood: almost every person 
who had ventured to bathe in this pool 
had been drowned, and in no single in¬ 
stance had the body of a drowned person 
been recovered. Evidently the deity pre¬ 
siding over these hallowed precincts re¬ 
sented such profanation of the sacred 
waters. 

I felt greatly ennobled by these confi- 


40 RAISING THE OLD BOY 


dences, assured as I was that I was the 
only pale-face to whom they had ever 
been disclosed; and, as may be presumed, 
the dark, silent sheet of water, with its 
sloping beaches, its fringe of birch and 
oak and pine, and guarded by the sunlit 
altar, held henceforth a charm of awe and 
mystery. The secret was actually too 
precious to keep locked in my own bosom. 
It was like a priceless jewel that must be 
exposed to the view of another, 

I had a sister, next older than myself, 
who had till now shared all my secrets. 
One night, sitting out under the stars, 
seizing some slight clue, she was soon pos¬ 
sessed of the whole strange narrative; and 
from that time for several days this was 
the favorite theme of our quiet confer¬ 
ences. At last, one Saturday afternoon, 
we stole out through the woods to the 
mysterious lake, and I there rehearsed to 
the amazed and delighted girl the wonder¬ 
ful revelation in all its striking details. 
That night something happened: 

Asleep on my narrow couch, under the 
sloping roof of my attic chamber, I was 
conscious of a gentle hand upon my arm 


A CLOSE CALL 


41 


and a finger on my lips. I slipped quietly 
from the bed. She picked up my clothing 
and led me into the dark hallway. I 
pulled on my long, loose pantaloons and, 
without a word of inquiry or remonstrance, 
followed her down the back stairs and into 
the dooryard. As we passed through the 
gate into the street the faithful house dog 
offered his company, but Lizzie, with a 
decisive movement of the arm, restrained 
him. Through the sleeping village we 
crept, and out along a neglected farm 
road for half a mile, then for a mile 
through fields in which the tall grass, wet 
with dew, brushed against our naked 
ankles, then for a mile or two through the 
solemn forests to the enchanted lake. 

We came out on the west shore, by the 
venerable cairn, upon which had been 
enacted such solemn and dreadful rites. 
Our first surprise—a prelude to the aston¬ 
ishing events of which we were soon to be 
spectators and participants—was to find 
the stones of the altar heated, and a 
smoldering fire in its shallow basin giving 
forth a faint but distinct odor of roasted 
flesh. There was intense, absolute silence 



42 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


■—a silence that a rustling leaf, the twitter 
of a bird, or a murmur of a tiny insect 
would have disturbed and desecrated. 
And, as an illustration of the perfect 
unison of soul existing only in the most 
kindred spirits, not a syllable had passed 
between us through the whole adventure. 

We stood with our naked feet at the 
water’s brink and watched the approach¬ 
ing sun, gilding the eastern sky with a 
sheen of purple and gold. From north 
and south, to meet precisely where he was 
presently to lift his forehead above the 
horizon, two awful thunder clouds ap¬ 
proached, casting shafts of deadly light¬ 
ning each into the other’s dark, defiant 
face. At this moment the sun, as arbiter 
of the fearful contest, sprang full-orbed 
between them. 

At that very instant a noble savage, 
standing upright in a light canoe, ap¬ 
peared in the foreground in the center of 
the lake—a perfect human statue, naked 
to the waist and from the knees, carved 
in bronze. He faced the sun, and his eyes 
swept from north to east, from east to 
south, from south to us—to her. Kneel- 


A CLOSE CALL , 43 

ing in the canoe, with a stroke of the 
paddle, he turned it as on a pivot directly 
toward us—toward her. He saw no one 
but her; and as he devoured her with his 
eager gaze I realized as I had never done 



before that this girl at my side, in the 
second year of her teens, was the most 
glorious creature that God had ever made. 
Silently as a specter, with a graceful sweep 
of the long, slender paddle, he shot the 















44 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


narrow craft like an arrow straight to 
where we stood. 

I trembled with emotions that it would 
be difficult to analyze: misgiving, hope, 
joy so mingled as to produce a perfect 
transport of my spiritual nature, but a 
slender hand held mine in loving clasp, 
without a tremor of excitement. On 
came the noble chief, and as I watched 
his approach I yielded to the spell of the 
vision—so brave, and kind, and tender. 
I had no further fear of him. With a 
lofty enthusiasm I rejoiced at the pros¬ 
pect of embracing and following him. 

Simultaneously with the slight quiver of 
the canoe as her prow struck the shelving 
beach there was a crash of thunder as 
those storm-clouds met in a grapple of 
flame. And as the firmament cracked, 
and while the heavens were dropping in 
splinters, the Indian, springing to his feet 
and using his paddle as a vaulting pole, 
leaped to the shore. As he swung the oar 
to make the spring a splash of water 
struck me fairly in the face. 

That splash of water woke me up. The 
roof leaked. 


VII 

A DECLARATION OF 
INDEPENDENCE 

T^ATHER never gave us any money, 
**• but we always had some task for 
which we got paid. My first one, when I 
was not over three or four years old, was 
to set a little basket of kindlings down by 
the kitchen stove every night before I 
went to bed, for which I got “fourpence 
ha’penny” a month. Now, when I was 
nine one of my regular tasks was to go 
up to the dam at the foot of the lake at 
six o’clock every evening and shut the 
sluice gates through which the water ran 
to turn the big water-wheel at the mill. 

It was the evening of the Fourth of 
July, and I had gone to bed somewhat 
battered and blistered and very tired and 
sleepy, when, in the stillness of the night 

following a noisy day, I heard the water 

45 


46 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


seething through the wasteway. I had 
forgotten to shut it off. I slipped on my 
pantaloons and picked my way in the 
darkness through the silent, shadowed 
forest to the dam, a quarter of a mile 
away. I walked boldly out along the nar¬ 
row abutment and, loosening the bar, let 
the heavy gate down into the sluiceway. 
The water settled back with a familiar 
surge and ripple against the shores. Be¬ 
fore me through a vista of encircling trees 
was a glimpse of the broad, deep lake; all 
about me lay the sleeping forest; behind 
me, far beyond sight or call, stood the 
nearest human habitation. 

I was not afraid. Up to that time I 
had never been conscious of physical fear. 
But now, as I stood in that solitude, a 
strange sense of uneasiness crept over me. 
And just then I remembered that old Joe 
Ward had been chased by a 4 ‘sea lion” up 
here the night before he died of delirium 
tremens. My breath began to come short 
and quick and I started along the narrow, 
slippery stones for the shore. Just then, 
suddenly, “Splash!”—exactly such a sound 
as a sea lion would make with his big, flat 



INDEPENDENCE 


47 


paw! As I reached the shore another 
splash, this time right behind me, sent 
me bounding up the trail. And the faster 
I ran the closer sounded the footfall of the 



savage beast on my track. At last, just 
as I felt his sharp claws grasping my 
shoulder, I landed, with a wild, desperate 
leap, upon our back porch, under the 
friendly light of the dining-room window. 





48 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


I sat down to recover my breath and my 
self-control (and, although I might not 
have confessed it then, my self-respect). 
With a new sense of shame upon me I 
debated the matter with myself. The dis¬ 
cussion, or dialogue, as I recall it, was 
about as follows: 

4 ‘Henry, you were scared.” 

“I was not, either; but I guess it would 
have scared you to have a sea lion chase 
you.” 

“Henry, there was no such monster 
there. Joe was drunk when he thought 
he saw it. It was only a big bullfrog, or a 
turtle, that made that splash.” 

“Well, it is all over now; and I am going 
to bed.” 

“Henry, where is your hat?” 

“Did I have a hat?” 

“You lost your hat, Henry, while you 
were booming along that trail.” 

“All right; I can get it in the morning.” 

“Henry, you are a big, baby coward. 
You do not dare to go back after your 
hat.” 

“See here. Do not dare call me a cow¬ 
ard.” 


INDEPENDENCE 


49 


“Well, the only way that you can prove 
that you are not a little ‘fraid-cat’ is by 
going right back after that hat.” 

So I had to go back, picking up my hat 
on the way. But, to complete my victory 
over my fears, with my nerves strung to 
their highest tension, I compelled my 
shaky legs to take me clear up to the 
scene of my fright. And I have always 
called this my “Declaration of Independ¬ 
ence.” 


4 




VIII 


MY NEMESIS 


E VERY New England village fifty or 
seventy-five years ago had a local 
funny man, and, of course, we had one. 
As I recall some of his sallies I think he 
was one of the best. Here is a sample: 

I was at the store on some errand and 
father was sitting in a group of neighbors 
about the stove. Our humorist said in 
his nasal drawl to the clerk behind the 
counter, “I say, Fred, I hear that Squire 
Wing reads the Bible at family prayers 
Sunday mornings.” 

“Well, what of it?” 

I glanced at father. He was bracing 
himself for the “hit” that he knew was 
coming. 

“Oh, nothing; only I understand that 
on weekdays at family prayers he reads 
Greeley’s Tribune.” 

Of course everybody laughed, except 
father and me; and even father smiled, 

but I did not dare to look pleased. I 

50 


MY NEMESIS 


51 


insert this as a pretty perfect sample of 
good-natured banter, in which in a sly 
way was exploited some personal idiosyn¬ 
crasy of the victim. 

Well, a youngster could not listen to 
such things without being tempted to imi¬ 
tate them. But I have sometimes half 
suspected that I have not the “gift,” and 
my attempts, which were mostly of the 
practical sort, were usually overtaken by 
an implacable fate—a sort of Nemesis. A 
few examples will show what a handicap 
I labored under in trying to be funny. 

I saw a boy slip a watermelon under 
the store steps and go inside on some 
errand. It would be a good joke on him 
to get it away and hide it; but just as I 
was slipping with it behind a tree the 
farmer from whose wagon he had stolen 
it came around the corner and “caught 
me with the goods.” No explanation that 
I could make was deemed satisfactory; 
and that was the occasion when my folks 
had to endure the subtle and covert com¬ 
miseration of the neighbors for having a 
“black sheep” in the family. 

But I usually had the sympathy of my 


52 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


own people in my misadventures. A sin¬ 
gle one, as I remember, strained the rela¬ 
tions between me and my maternal 
grandmother, who lived just around the 
corner. I came upon a bad boy trying to 
tie a tin teapot to the tail of a stray dog. 
The victim got away, and while he was 
chasing it I coaxed his own puppy up and 
fastened the utensil to him and sent him 
off clattering down the street. But it 
proved that the teapot belonged to my 
grandmother, and she had chanced to see 
me do my part. That was when she 
changed her will, bequeathing to my 
brother twice as much as me. (She finally 
died sixty cents in debt, and I made my 
brother pay two thirds of it, so that I 
finally made ten cents out of the opera¬ 
tion; and I insert this as a slight encour¬ 
agement to other unlucky youngsters.) 

My Nemesis was quite generally a 
“school missis,” and the following are a 
couple of samples: I had stuck a pin, 
point up, in the crack of the seat of a boy 
whom I did not like; and the teacher hap¬ 
pened (?) to change our seats, and took 
me over and sat me down on that pin. 


MY NEMESIS 


53 


But one of the most painful of my early 
experiences was with the joke that I got 
on another teacher. I got one of the big 



boys to poke me up through the narrow 
scuttle in the ceiling during the noon re¬ 
cess into the low, dark garret over the 
schoolroom. My idea was to give the 




















54 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


teacher a good scare, and I did. After 
the school had opened I began to move 
about, and scratch on the boards, and 
meow softly. She sent a couple of boys 
out to shoo that cat off the roof, but they 
came back and reported that there was 
no cat there. Then she went out and 
looked in all the tree tops. She at last 
gave up trying to solve the mystery, and 
was about to call the school to order 
again when down through the ceiling 
came a boy, hitting her desk with a bump 
and bringing with him a bushel or two of 
lath and plaster. I had inadvertently 
crept out upon a place where the joists 
had not been boarded over, and had 
broken through. And then she very prop¬ 
erly decided that my pantaloons needed 
dusting; and that was where one of those 
broken laths came in handy. 

But the very worst—and I know that 
you want to hear of the worst—was the 
only occasion when I had the presumption 
to try to get a rig on my father. I was 
about fifteen—the age at which the aver¬ 
age boy is inclined to take himself pretty 
seriously. There was a debate at the red 



MY NEMESIS 


55 


schoolhouse. The question was, “Re¬ 
solved, That intemperance is the worst of 
all evils.” Father was the leader on the 
affirmative, and I crept across to his op¬ 
ponent and asked him to call on me. 
When my chance came I got to my feet 
and said, “I have great respect for the 
opinion of the leader on the affirmative, 
but a better authority has said that 
‘money is the root of all evil.’ ” I sat 
down. I had actually silenced him and 
he surrendered the question. It was 
“some boy” who followed him home and 
with an obvious swagger sauntered into 
the living room, where he sat pensively 
by the fireside. Presently mother inquired 
about the debate, and father told her. He 
did not seem a bit proud, as he might have 
been, of his talented boy. But mother al¬ 
most shouted that there was no such 
statement in the Scripture; that it was 
“the love of money” that was the root of 
evil. And then what? Why, I got the 
punishment that I deserved for misquot¬ 
ing the Scripture. 


IX 


THE CONFESSIONAL 

E VERY boy should have a sanctuary 
into which he can retreat on occa¬ 
sion for spiritual relief. His approach to 
this holy place and entrance into it must 
be as natural and spontaneous as are his 
demands for food and shelter, for air and 
sunlight. This birthright of every boy is 
the deep, the fathomless well of trust and 
sympathy found only in the bosom of a 
saintly woman. This shrine is his con¬ 
fessional. Into the profound abyss of that 
woman’s love and faith and pity he is to 
ease his spirit of its burdens of shame and 
sorrow. 

To my confessional I had come, late 
one night, in the summer after my tenth 
birthday. My slumbers had been inter¬ 
rupted by the recollection of some misde¬ 
meanor of the previous day, and I stole 
from my couch and crept into my mother’s 
arms. She led me into the sitting room, 

and took a seat at the west window, with 

56 


THE CONFESSIONAL 


57 


me on a low stool by her side. There 
floated in upon us through the open case¬ 
ment the hushed and hallowed voices of 
the night—the familiar murmur of the 
brooklet creeping through the meadow, 
the whisper of the summer breeze in the 
treetops, and the smothered crooning of 
Dame Nature with her drowsy offspring 
animate as she folded them in her warm 
embrace. In this presence, with my 
mother’s arms about my neck and her 
bright, beautiful face bent over me, I 
poured all my troubles into her heart of 
love; and as she sat thus in her loose, 
white nightrobe, with the moonlight creep¬ 
ing under the windowshades and falling 
upon her fair face, I think I never saw so 
pensive a picture or one in which there 
was such an expression of yearning and 
expectancy. 

Thus was set the mise en scene in which 
the curtain was to be raised upon my 
future. Lifting me to my feet, with my 
face level with her ardent, wistful eyes, 
in a voice tense with suppressed emotion, 
she opened my life to me: I was God’s 
gift to her, her heart’s desire, her first- 



58 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


born boy, a bright, strong, beautiful babe. 
She was very ill, but very happy as she lay 
and painted pictures of my future. But in 
a few weeks a wasting disease that the best 
medical skill could not check reduced me 
to a mere skeleton. At last the physician 
told her that there was no hope for me. 
In this extremity she asked the dear Lord 
for the grace she needed to give me up. 
Then, alone with him and me, she held 
me up—a mere bundle of bones—in her 
trembling hands and gave me to him, to 
take then to himself or to leave with her 
to nourish and train. And God recog¬ 
nized and honored that act of faith. 
From that hour, to the surprise of every¬ 
body, I began to get well; and now, here 
I was, a strong, healthy lad of ten, with¬ 
out the recollection of a single day of 
illness and with the prospect of a long life. 
The page on which this wonderful story 
had been written had till now been closed 
and sealed, but this night, which had 
brought me, penitent and chastened, to 
her side, had furnished the occasion for 
which she was looking, when the leaf 
might be turned and the story revealed. 


THE CONFESSIONAL 


59 


The conclusion was obvious, even to a 
child, that this very special interest that 
my Maker had in me involved me in some 
very special obligations to him. That 
thought somewhat annoyed me at first; 
but gradually, under the glow of my 
mother’s exalted spirit, I was moved with 
a strange enthusiasm. And a great hun¬ 
ger of soul came to me for what was good, 
and for all that was good. Perhaps I gave 
some expression to this desire, for, after 
a pause of a few seconds, mother gave me 
an encouraging word: “You are a good 
boy, Henry, but not such a boy as he 
wants you to be. But you may be. What 
you need is the help that can come only 
from him. Will you accept it?” 

I fell at her feet with my face in her 
lap. At that instant a flood of love and 
joy swept over me and filled my soul. 


GOOD, BUT NOT “GOODY-GOOD” 


T HE change on that June night after 
my tenth birthday at my mother’s 
knee was real and radical. I was the hap¬ 
piest boy in the neighborhood. And I 
was conscious of a new force working 
within me to overcome my grievous faults 
of pride and passion. But there was no 
such organizations then as the King’s 
Sons and the Boy Scouts in which are 
now recognized a child’s special needs for 
religious training and culture. I was the 
only little boy in the neighborhood who 
was trying to lead a Christian life. 

I joined the church to which my par¬ 
ents belonged and was led by my mother 
to the midweek meeting for prayer and 
testimony. The leader would frequently 
interrupt the proceedings by asking some 
one in particular how he was “getting 
along.” I was a little ashamed of my 


NOT “GOODY-GOOD” 


61 


mother because she did not seem to be 
“getting along” as well as some others— 
at least she did not make as long speeches; 
and she often would shed tears when she 
testified of the Saviour’s love. The im¬ 
pression upon my mind was that these 
were a sort of competitive contests at 
which the Wings were putting in a pretty 
poor showing. What a temptation this 
presented for the manufacture of “expe¬ 
rience!” My parents had already taught 
me to prevaricate (the same as yours 
did): to pretend that I liked to have my 
ears washed, and to aver that I did not 
want that other piece of pie. Here was a 
chance for me to exercise my gift for in¬ 
vention in a new field; and I can see now 
that with a little encouragement I might 
have developed into a pretty passable 
hypocrite. What saved me, perhaps, was 
an innate dislike for shams and duplicity, 
as, for instance, I have never got where I 
like to say that I do not want that other 
piece of pie. I had to confess that I got 
out of patience and threw a stone at him 
when a yellow-bellied sunfish refused to 
even smell of a nice, fat worm; and that I 


62 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


once slapped another boy for making a 
face at my sister. 

These were not mere delinquencies in 
the estimation of the saintly people with 
whom I mostly had church fellowship. In 
their view they were grievous sins; and 
they woidd scare me half to death with 
their sighs and groans over my frequent 
backslidings. How much it meant to me 
during those years that my home was a 
sanctuary the religious atmosphere of 
which was so bright and buoyant. Ex¬ 
cept for this I might have been utterly 
submerged by the wearying and disheart¬ 
ening solicitude of these kindly people, to 
whom my petty delinquencies presented a 
perplexing series of contradictions and in¬ 
consistencies. 


XI 

MY “UPSETTING” FAULT 

T T was a colored preacher, I believe, 
* who very properly described some 
faults as “upsetting sins.” The weakness 
which brought me the most trouble was 
my sense of humor, and the following is 
an example of how “upsetting” it some¬ 
times was: 

When I was twelve or thirteen years of 
age I was the janitor of the church. My 
duties were simply to sweep and dust the 
auditorium once a week, to empty and 
clean a cuspidor from nearly every pew 
(and at one time two from the pulpit), to 
trim the lamps and light them for the 
evening services, to chop and split the 
wood and attend the fires, and to ring the 
bell. For this simple service I received 
the magnificent stipend of twenty-five dol¬ 
lars a year; but it was this that gave me 

an excuse for slipping away one Sunday 

63 


64 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


afternoon and that led me into serious 
difficulty. 

There were several Roman Catholic 
families in the neighborhood, and a priest 
came occasionally from Falls Village and 
held services in a private house. One 
Sunday, contrary to the rules of our home, 
but ostensibly on an errand to the church, 
I strolled out to this service. The rev¬ 
erend father stood in the front doorway 
of the dwelling and I climbed upon the 
stone wall in front and watched the pro¬ 
ceedings with childish interest. At the 
close of the services Mr. O’Neil, our vil¬ 
lage tailor, who was acting as a sort of 
clerk, stepped to the priest’s side and in a 
voice that reached the limits of the scat¬ 
tered assembly made the following an¬ 
nouncement: “Four weeks from to-day 
there will be another meeting in this 
house. Father Kelly will probably be 
here on Saturday; but if you do not see 
him on Saturday you may look for him 
on Friday evening.” 

I laughed aloud; and the priest, point¬ 
ing his finger at me, pronounced upon me 
the most awful imprecations that I have 


MY “UPSETTING” FAULT 


65 


heard. I shrank away terrified and 
ashamed. 

The next forenoon a constable came to 
the schoolhouse and called me out. Draw¬ 
ing a formidable paper from his pocket, 
he proceeded to read it in a voice full of 
unction. It was a good piece, resonant 
with big words and high-sounding phrases. 
Someone “with force and arms” and “with 
tumultuous and offensive carriage” did 
“disturb and break the peace” and did 
“provoke contention and strife” with 
“abusive and indecent language, gesture 
and noise,” “against the peace,” and “of 
evil example,” of “the Commonwealth of 
Connecticut,” and “contrary to the statute 
of said Commonwealth.” 

That sounded quite like preaching, and 
I thought I knew but few men who could 
beat it. But when he asked if I under¬ 
stood it I shook my head. That had been 
its chief merit (like a good deal of preach¬ 
ing). Then he explained that I was being 
arrested for disturbing a religious as¬ 
sembly. 

What! The whole Commonwealth 
(whatever that meant) jumping upon a 


66 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


little boy for laughing! Here I was trying 
pretty hard to be a good boy when I had 
suddenly been discovered to be a des¬ 
perate criminal. (Let me confess, in a 
whisper, that I experienced a sense of 
satisfaction in the fact that I was no 
small criminal. No ordinary boy could 
have mussed up the whole State of Con¬ 
necticut that way.) But of course, such a 
dreadful wicked fellow would not be per¬ 
mitted to live. I was to be shot, or 
hanged, or “torn limb from limb,’’ or 
burned at the stake like that picture of a 
martyr over my grandmother’s fireplace. 

Now, this is not a bit of hysterics. It 
is a true story of a little, bareheaded, bare¬ 
footed boy, standing on a schoolhouse 
doorstep. The building in which the vil¬ 
lage hearse was kept stood in the corner 
of the school grounds. I looked across to 
it, and was somewhat assured to discover 
that the vehicle, with its high driver’s 
seat, glass side panels, and black (wooden) 
plumes, was not in sight. Then the con¬ 
stable spoke a few kind words to me and 
I promised that I would not run away and 
went back to my lessons. 


MY “UPSETTING” FAULT 


67 


The trial was to be that afternoon be¬ 
fore my father, who was a justice of the 
peace. I would have preferred to take 
the case right up before the throne of 
Jehovah; for, while I stood in awe of 
him, I was not so afraid of him as of 
Ebenezer Wing, with his reputation of 
meting out strict justice against evil¬ 
doers. I did not go home at noon until 
I had seen father go back to his office 
from his dinner. Then I went in and 
confided all the facts to my mother. She 
encouraged me to relate the whole circum¬ 
stance when I got a chance and to take 
the penalty “like a little man.” 

The constable came for me about two 
o’clock, and when we reached father’s 
office we found the room crowded, mostly 
with yesterday’s congregation. By father’s 
side sat the reverend priest, whose male¬ 
dictions still burned in my bosom. An 
empty wood box in the corner served as a 
prisoner’s cage, into which I was lifted, 
with a stool to sit on. Father opened the 
court with due solemnity, and then asked 
the accused what was his plea, “Guilty” 
or “Not Guilty.” 


68 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


That seemed to be my opportunity, and, 
following mother’s advice, only with my 
fighting spirit roused by the hostile at¬ 
mosphere, I told the story. But ah! that 
fatal gift of mimicry! and that inveterate 



love of fun! I ended my “confession” 
with a rehearsal, just as it had been de¬ 
livered in the Irish brogue, of the an¬ 
nouncement: “Fower wakes from the day, 
there’ll be another mating in this hoose. 
Father Kelly’ll probbly be here Satherday; 


































MY “UPSETTING” FAULT 


69 


but, if ye do not see him Satherday, ye 
may look for him Friday avening.” And 
then 1 laughed . 

Bang! Bang! Bang! (with a wooden 
mallet on the table). “Order,” Bang! 
“Silence,” Bang! “Outrage,” Bang! 
“Contempt of Court,” Bang! “Liberty of 
Conscience,” Bang! “Freedom of Wor¬ 
ship,” Bang! “Guilty, on his own confes¬ 
sion,” Bang! “Example,” Bang! “Fine, 
fifteen dollars,” Bang! Bang! “Court ad¬ 
journed,” Bang! Bang! Bang! 

After the priest had shaken hands with 
“the Court,” and the crowd had begun to 
disperse, I heard the constable say: “In 
default of payment shall I commit him to 
the lockup?” 

Father looked a little puzzled, and then 
he drew out his wallet and counted out 
the money. It was some time before I 
realized the source of his embarrassment. 
He had forgotten that I was his child, and 
had fined himself for being the father of 
such a boy. 

Did you hear of the little chap who per¬ 
sisted in laughing while the teacher 
whipped him? He explained afterward 


70 RAISING THE OLD BOY 


that he was the wrong boy and the joke 
was on the teacher. This was another 
case in which the wrong person got the 
punishment; but I do not remember that 
this one laughed. 


XII 


THE LAST LESSON 

I T was in the early summer of 1862, and 
I was in a law office at South Norwalk 
preparing for admission to the bar. The 
people in Goshen, where I was brought up 
—now, quit laughing, for I had some 
“bringing up”—were to have a great cele¬ 
bration of “The Nation’s Natal Day,” 
and would I come up there and deliver 
the “oration” for twenty dollars? I 
would. I would have gone for forty dol¬ 
lars. So I prepared an old-fashioned, 
rousing Fourth of July speech, in which 
the Old Eagle was to soar and “flop” his 
wings. My parents still lived there, and I 
went up the day before. I expected, of 
course, to go out to the grounds with 
them; but instead I was lifted into an im¬ 
provised chariot, with the “President of 
the Day,” and, drawn by four white 

horses, with flags on their ears and rib- 

71 



72 RAISING THE OLD BOY 


bons in their tails, I rode out behind the 
band, with a “Presidential bee” buzzing 
in my ears. (That bee soon got “nipped 
in the bud,” as an Irishman might say.) 

Well, I got off my “oration” all right. 
I was—or thought I was—a “War Demo¬ 
crat.” I believed, as Lincoln declared 
soon afterward (I do not know how he 
heard of it), that the war was for the 
preservation of the Union, and not for 
the freeing of the slaves, and that it 
would be carried forward to its ultimate 
triumph by those who held this view. 

This was in the forenoon, and was fol¬ 
lowed by a “banquet” at which several 
impromptu addresses were to be delivered. 
I sat in the seat of honor, and my father, 
evidently in recognition of his being the 
parent of such a bright boy, sat opposite 
me. The very first of the “after-dinner” 
speakers to be called on was “Squire 
Wing.” I had forgotten that father was 
a rank Abolitionist till he got to his feet 
and, leaning across the table, shouted, 
“Who would have thought that Ebenezer 
Wing would ever come to this disgrace! 
To be compelled to listen to such brutal 


THE LAST LESSON 


73 


sentiments from the lips of a miscreant 
bearing his name!” 

I was a little boy again trembling in my 
boots. And I looked around, just as I 
used to do, for my mother. She sat, a few 
yards away, in her low phaeton, with good 
old Billy Button in the shafts. I crept out 
to her. 

“Henry,” she said, “I think there is a 
train due at Wolcottville for South Nor¬ 
walk in about an hour.” 

So I came away without stopping to get 
my twenty dollars; and I guess it was a 
narrow escape, for at the rate he was 
going on father would have come around 
and cuffed my ears in about two minutes. 

Less than eight months after this inci¬ 
dent a crippled and wasted caricature of 
humanity was assisted from a railroad 
train at Wolcott ville. As I balanced my¬ 
self unsteadily a moment on my crutches 
my father recognized me, and approached 
with a smile of welcome in which was a 
gleam of surprise and pity. I leaned for¬ 
ward and reached for his outstretched 
hand in greeting, but just then my strength 


74 RAISING THE OLD BOY 


gave way and I fell into his arms. With 
some assistance from bystanders he laid 
me in a corner of the low phaeton standing 
at the curb; and thus, with his arm about 
me as a buffer against the slightest jar or 
jostle of the vehicle, we started on the 
trip up the rolling hills to the home of my 
boyhood. 

As good old Billy Button, evidently con¬ 
scious of my weakness, picked his way 
carefully between the pebbles and ruts 
along the winding road I rehearsed in 
broken sentences the story of the crash 
and scream and roar of battle out of which 
I had come broken and bleeding; of the 
terror of the long, black night through 
which I lay half naked upon the battle¬ 
field, with the wintry rain turning to 
sleet and snow, listening to the groans and 
sobs of dying men; and of the weary days 
and nights of suffering while my strength 
was slowly recruited for this tiresome 
journey that had at last dropped me as 
a helpless child into my father’s arms. 

As I looked up now into the face that 
bent over me and saw it flooded with 
tears there came to me a new sense of the 


THE LAST LESSON 


75 


worth of this man, whose kind, firm hand 
with such superior judgment and patience 
and skill had guided the steps along a 
blind and treacherous trail of a heedless, 
headstrong boy. And I came to realize 
how serious to this man, whose opinions, 
right or wrong, had the strength and force 
of convictions, were my frequent infrac¬ 
tions of filial duty and occasional failures 
in filial respect. 

I then and there resolved that I would 
try to be more worthy of such a father; 
and this may properly be set down as the 
final lesson in the “raising” of “the Old 
Boy.” 


XIII 


“CHESTNUTS” 

I DID not realize the historic import¬ 
ance of the home of my childhood till 
I took my “walks abroad.” I then began 
to hear rehearsed and claimed as original 
in nearly every locality where I tarried 
the same stories—usually disfigured and 
mutilated—with which I had been enter¬ 
tained in my early life. In fact, I have 
scarcely heard an anecdote worth repeat¬ 
ing that did not evidently originate in 
that quiet countryside. I was impressed 
with this fact on a visit after an absence 
of many years to the locality where these 
events would naturally, and it would 
seem could only possibly, have occurred. 

There, right before my eyes, for in¬ 
stance, was the identical church building 
to which many of these current stories 
were certainly attached. I knew the 
German philosopher—his name was 
“Schmidt,” and surely no one could ask 

better proof than that—who, when he 

76 


“CHESTNUTS” 


77 


was asked to donate something to put a 
lightning rod on the edifice, replied, “Na, 
if the Lord vants to dunder his own house 
down, let him dunder it down.” This is 
the church in which, during a “protracted 
meeting,” a preacher prayed, “O Lord, 
come down! Come right through the 
roof! and I will pay for the shingles.” In 
my childhood I heard these anecdotes 
related, in connection with that church, 
five hundred (estimated) times—and how 
could they be more completely verified?— 
and yet they have been purloined and, 
evidently by violence and force, trans¬ 
planted in perhaps a thousand scattered 
neighborhoods. 

Again, it was in this church, during a 
possibly not very learned but profound 
discourse on the relation of the doctrine 
of free will to infant baptism, that a man 
(and I knew the man) fell asleep with his 
head thrown back; and a boy (and I 
knew the boy) sitting in the gallery 
dropped a quid of spruce gum into his 
mouth. Now, what is the use of people 
in Missouri claiming that incident, when 
nearly every person present saw it, and 


78 RAISING THE OLD BOY 


the boy who did it told me of it? We 
were in the same Sunday-school class, and 
he was esteemed to be one of the most 
truthful boys in the class. 

It was in association with this church 
that an episode occurred in the life of a 
youngster four or five years older than I. 
He thought that he had a “base” voice, 
and had been admitted to the choir. One 
Sunday morning after breakfast and 
chores he went up to the attic to rehearse 
the tunes for the day. The first one was 
“Rockingham,” and this was the way he 
started: Do sol la sol do se do sol, Do sol 
la fa do la sol do. 






Just then his father shouted from the foot 
of the stairs, “Hi there! You Jake! stop 
that! Ain’t you ashamed to be up there 
in the attic Sunday morning sawing a 
board?” This story has been exploited 
from Maine to Oregon; but I heard that 
voice that same Sunday in the choir loft, 
and I had at least a formal acquaintance 


> 













“CHESTNUTS” 


79 


with the nasal appendage through which 
it was produced. 

Here is the identical hill (yes, it is 
there yet, to be identified if necessary) 
where a woman driving down had her 
horse run away. Half way down was (is, 
if it is questioned) a sharp turn, opposite 
which was (is) a gap in the fence, leading 
into a pasture. Coming to this perilous 
place, the woman, “with rare presence of 
mind”—as they said of the man when a 
bull tossed him over a fence and he 
landed on his head—turned the beast into 
this field and slam up against a tree. At 
the next midweek prayer meeting in the 
schoolhouse—and there stands the school- 
house in the grove of beeches as if to 
challenge contradiction—as her contribu¬ 
tion to the entertainment the heroine of 
the adventure rehearsed the fascinating 
tale. At the close of her narrative the 
leader asked her if during the thrilling 
affair she put her trust in Providence, to 
which the matter-of-fact woman replied, 
“I trusted Providence till the breeching 
broke, and then I made up my mind to do 
something myself.” 



80 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


It was at the top of this hill that our 
village ne’er-do-well, under the influence 
of liquor as usual, tumbled out of a wagon 
and cut a hole in his skull. Before the 
doctor arrived some of the succulent sub¬ 
stance with which the cranial cells are 
supposed to be supplied had oozed out 
upon the ground. The doctor filled the 
cavity from the skull of a pig being 
butchered near by, and trepanned the 
fracture with a silver “ninepence.” Of 
course, the fellow got well; and some time 
afterward his wife was asked if that sub¬ 
stitution of a pig’s “gray matter” had 
affected his disposition. After a moment’s 
pause she replied, “Well, I guess it has 
improved his disposition some.” Now, I 
was personally acquainted with all the 
parties to this affair. I even had a nod¬ 
ding acquaintance with the pig (I mean 
the one that was butchered); but I have 
been compelled to listen to this story, re¬ 
peated with elaborate particularity, a 
thousand miles from there. 

This was the man who chose to be 
buried alive rather than to work. 

A committee of citizens waited upon 


“CHESTNUTS” 


81 


him and told him plainly that they were 
tired of supporting him in his idleness, 
and that if he did not go to work he was 
to be left to starve, quoting as their au¬ 
thority the Scripture rule, “If a man will 
not work, neither shall he eat.” The poor 
fellow might also have quoted Scripture, 
“I cannot dig.” At least, he had not the 
slightest idea of going to work, and as 
starvation was a lingering death, he 
begged of them to bury him alive and 
have it done with. Thinking to frighten 
him, they improvised a coffin of rough 
boards, laid him in, with the lid loose for 
respiration, shoved it into the old, dilapi¬ 
dated, cob-webby hearse, and started for 
the burial ground a half-mile away. Pass¬ 
ing the shoe shop, the cobbler came out. 
“Who is dead?” 

“No one. Old Joe Ward has chosen to 
be buried rather than to go to work.” 

“What? Alive?” 

“Yes, that is his preference.” 

“Now, see here, that is a cruel thing to 
do; and it will give the neighborhood a 
bad name. Why, I will give him a bushel 
of corn rather than have him buried alive.” 


82 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


There was a slight movement in the 
rickety coffin, and then a tired voice 
was heard to inquire, “Is—the—corn— 
shelled?” 

“Why, no, it is not shelled.” 

“Then,” he mumbled, “let—the—per- 
ces-sion—move—on. ’ ’ 

Now, is it.not an outrage that this his¬ 
toric incident has been appropriated by 
perhaps a thousand localities and applied 
to more than that number of the victims 
of the hook worm* epidemic? The claim 
of that locality to this affair ought to be 
above dispute, for there is the veritable 
graveyard, the old hearse, the spot where 
the shoeshop stood, and the very highway 
over which the “percession” moved. In¬ 
deed, it was said that my father was the 
chief actor in the drama—outside of the 
coffin, I mean. If so, it was before I made 
his acquaintance, for I must confess that 
I have no recollection of it. But one fact 
ought to be conclusive: I frequently heard 
father’s name mentioned in connection 
with the affair, and 1 never heard him deny 
it. 

The following characteristic Indian tale 




“CHESTNUTS” 


83 


has followed the frontier nearly across the 
continent, but it was really enacted, with¬ 
out any apparent question, right in the 
little settlement of which my old home 
was a sort of center. Here is the story: 
An Indian, a member of the Scatacook 
tribe, who lived under “Mohawk” moun¬ 
tain, came to our house and asked mother 
for food. She handed him an ax and told 
him to cut some wood and he should have 
his dinner. The “noble savage” folded his 
arms and looked down upon her with 
withering contempt. Walking to the door, 
he turned and, lifting his hand as though 
taking an oath in court, he said, with the 
most august dignity: “Your Big Book 
says that your Great God made the heav¬ 
ens and the earth; and he looked at him 
and he said, ‘It is good.’ Then he made 
the birds and the fishes and the creeping 
things; and he looked at him and he said, 
‘It is good.’ Then he made the wolves 
and the catamounts and the foxes and 
the deer; and he looked at him and he 
said, ‘It is good.’ Then he made man; 
and he looked at him and he said, ‘It is 
good.’ And then he made woman; and 


84 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


he looked at him—and he did not say 
anything! Ugh!” 

Now, I knew that Indian, and he was 
of the exact type for such a performance; 
and while mother always met the accusa¬ 
tion with a quizzical smile, she never de¬ 
nied it. I have handled the ax that he 
declined to manipulate, and very likely I 
helped eat the dinner that he did not get. 
Could anything be more conclusive? 

These reminiscences, with the attendant 
moral reflections, were inspired, as I have 
said, by a late visit to the neighborhood 
where my childhood was spent. There 
was little change, except in the people. 
I met but one of my old playmates. He 
sat just where I had left him fifty years 
before on the store steps, whittling evi¬ 
dently the same pine stick with almost 
certainly the same buckhorn-handled jack¬ 
knife. I had not seen anyone “whittle” 
in forty years, and nothing that I saw 
there recalled so vividly the old times. 

I accosted him: “Hello, Nelse!” 

“Why, hello. Hank!” 

I had forgotten that I was called 


“CHESTNUTS” 


85 


“Hank,” and that my brother Charles 
was “Chank.” Nelson had stayed there 
while the rest of us drifted away. He 
was reputed to be “well fixed,” having 
bought “abandoned farms” at his own 
price and sold them—mostly to foreigners 
—for half their real value. In one of these 
“deals” I felt certain that I had a personal 
interest. He said that he had sold fifty 
tons of the refuse from the old abandoned 
tanyard down by the river to a wholesale 
grocery firm for “breakfast food.” I re¬ 
called having tasted some of it served 
with sugar and cream at our boarding 
house. 

There was the usual group of loungers 
about a country store, among whom he 
was evidently a sort of nabob. They 
listened with curious interest to our con¬ 
versation, nodding at everything he said 
and applauding all his dry humor. I tried 
some twentieth-century jokes on them, 
but they had not got beyond the eigh¬ 
teenth or nineteenth. At last I thought 
I would catch them with a good one on 
Nelson: 

“Say, Nelse,” I remarked, “was not 


86 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


you the boy who every time he caught a 
fish would run home to show it to his 
mother?” 

(A cautious, conservative sort of “stand- 
pat” giggle.) 

“Sure! and do you remember, Hank, 
that you used to run home and tell your 
little sister every time you had a bite?” 
(Uproarious laughter.) 

I came away then, and as I strolled 
down the Litchfield road I pondered upon 
this bit of repartee: Was not that a pretty 
good illustration of the difference in char¬ 
acter between Nelson and me? He had 
evidently caught quite a lot of slimy little 
fish, while I have had some magnificent 
bites. There is a proverb current up 
there: “A feller allers, gen’ly, don’t ketch 
a good menny bigger fish ’n he does 
ketch”; and I have had a good deal of 
real pleasure out of the fish that I did not 
catch. Indeed, I am not sure but I have 
more real enjoyment now, in the recol¬ 
lection of my big bites, than Nelson has 
in all the “shiners” with which his creel 
is loaded. 


XIV 


“THE ETERNAL STEP OF 
PROGRESS” 

T^\ID the suggestion escape me that I 
walked down the Litchfield road? 
That I walked , in a country road, in this 
twentieth century? Not much! Before I 
had gone twenty rods: “Toot! toot!”—a 
“devil wagon” was on my track. I sprang 
to the nearest telephone pole and climbed 
to a place of safety. (That is what tele¬ 
phone poles along country roads are chiefly 
for—a sort of “first aid” for pestered pe¬ 
destrians. This one had figures on it— 
1327—evidently a tally of the lives it had 
saved—the same as mine.) This machine 
turned into a farmyard just beyond, and 
there I discovered that it was an innocent¬ 
looking electric runabout. The young 
woman who had been driving it was re¬ 
turning from her triweekly trip to Winsted 
(a little matter of twenty miles), where she 
had a regular customer for a pound of 
butter and a half dozen fresh-laid eggs. 

She looked as harmless as the other thing, 

87 




88 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


and said that she had never even run over 
a chicken. But I had had my usual scare 
just the same; and that friendly pole had 
the credit of another life saved. And now, 
if any “Old Boy” is inclined to forget that 



he is living in a new age, let him take a 
stroll out on some country road and get 
“toot-ered” by a pretty girl in a red 
runabout. 

A half mile from the village on a knoll 




















PROGRESS 


89 


facing the south is the community burial 
ground, and I stepped in through the 
open gateway. The whole inclosure was 
covered with a carpet of green, and as 
there were no signs to “Keep off the 
Grass” I walked about, and soon fell into 
the spirit of the place—so restful and 
friendly. Is there anywhere in the whole 
wide world a spot which has a more genial 
and wholesome atmosphere than a coun¬ 
try graveyard? Here were no obtrusive 
monuments or mausoleums attempting 
to carry forward the petty class distinc¬ 
tions of this mortal life, and no neglected 
paupers’ corner to cast disparagement 
upon the memory of the unprosperous. 
The Angel of Death was here recognized 
as the great leveler of rank and place and 
pride, and in their stead was realized a 
distinct sense of comradery and good fel¬ 
lowship. Here was nothing exclusive, as 
there is necessarily (and properly) in a 
“churchyard.” This was veritably a 
“God’s Acre.” Believers and unbelievers, 
Jews, Catholics, and Protestants all found 
a welcome and a resting place in this 
caravansary of the dead. 



90 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


As I lingered here a flood of gracious, 
kindly memories swept over me and held 
me in a delightful thrall. I was living in 
the old days, amid the old scenes and 
associations. Even the names on the un¬ 
pretentious headstones betrayed the quaint 
and homely tastes and fancies of those 
times: “Elizabeth” (my mother), “Mary 
Jane,” “Ann Eliza,” “Rebecca,” “Jeru- 
sha,” and “Mercy”; “Ebenezer” (my 
father), “Joshua,” “Hosea,” “Hezekiah,” 
“Philo,” “Jeremiah” and one “Ananias.” 
These last had proved pitiful disappoint¬ 
ments—Jeremiah was the jolliest fellow in 
four townships, and Ananias turned out to 
be only an ordinary liar. 

But the most delightful feature of a 
country burial ground is that in its atmos¬ 
phere of neighborliness all old feuds and 
dissensions are dissipated. Here, side by 
side, were laid the mortal remains of a 
“Jackson Democrat” and an “Old Line 
Whig”; of a “Knownothing” and a hap¬ 
less Immigrant; of an Arminian, who in¬ 
sisted that all went to heaven who chose 
to; and a Calvinist, who sometimes had 
painful doubts of his own “election,” but 


PROGRESS 


91 


in his generous spirit cherished a hope for 
all his neighbors. And, right in their very 
midst, was laid the body of a terrible 
Universalist, who entertained the dread¬ 
ful belief that the love of God is so great, 
in Christ, that it will certainly save every¬ 
body. Their mortal remains were buried 
here, but in the apprehension of their 
spiritual presence I sensed a tranquil and 
beautiful harmony. They know more now 
than they did, and in the light in which 
they now “see eye to eye” these differ¬ 
ences are dissolved and dissipated. 

How naturally this idea of mutual good 
understanding and concord attaches to 
our conceptions of the future life! But 
now, standing in this presence, I began to 
realize somewhat the trend and goal of 
the spirit of progress in the sweep and 
current of which we live. With our tele¬ 
phones and our rural postal delivery are 
we not living in a better light, with a 
broader vision? And by the blending of 
our community interests and our freer in¬ 
tercourses are we not introducing a more 
intelligent and helpful neighborliness? In 
fact, are we not making approach to the 


92 


RAISING THE OLD BOY 


ideal which till now has been assumed to 
belong only to the future state? 

A community burial ground, on a 
bright, sunshiny, June morning, with its 
tranquillizing and inspiriting atmosphere* 
is certainly a good spot to visit, and as I 
turned away I was glad to have lived to 
be even an “Old Boy” in this new cen¬ 
tury. And as with a lighter spirit and a 
firmer step I went on my way in my 
heart was the song of one of our later 
(but not lesser) prophets: 

“O Backward-looking son of time! 

The new is old, the old is new. 

The cycle of a change sublime 
Still sweeping through. 

“But life shall on and upward go; 

Th’ eternal step of Progress beats 
To that great anthem, calm and slow, 
Which God repeats.” 



















































































